Q&A: St. Mary food pantry organizer Paul Baillargeon

It’s been a hard year for organizations focusing on hunger. In Jewett City, Deacon Paul Baillargeon, who manages the food pantry at St. Mary Church with Deacon Tony Dombkowski, said he’s seen the number of clients grow 50 percent, from about 90 families on average in 2011 to the 140 that were served in November.

By ALISON SHEA

The Bulletin

By ALISON SHEA

Posted Dec. 4, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Dec 4, 2012 at 4:04 AM

By ALISON SHEA

Posted Dec. 4, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Dec 4, 2012 at 4:04 AM

Jewett City, Conn.

It’s been a hard year for organizations focusing on hunger. In Jewett City, Deacon Paul Baillargeon, who manages the food pantry at St. Mary Church with Deacon Tony Dombkowski, said he’s seen the number of clients grow 50 percent, from about 90 families on average in 2011 to the 140 that were served in November.

Q: Where do your clients come from?

A: We get referrals from TVCCA (Thames Valley Council on Community Action), and we get new ones every day. They come in and we get their names in the book. As long as they need it, we’re here. When it comes to the new clients, a lot are coming from Jewett City and Lisbon. Because Griswold — that’s outlying areas. We get most from where they’re close. We also service Voluntown — we get more now because they had a food pantry there, but they closed last year. We have some clients from Preston and Canterbury, the ones closest to Jewett City. It keeps us busy.

Q: You seem to be pretty well-stocked, even with the increase.

A: It’s much better. It would usually be about half of what you see. Instead of three rows of cans on this shelf, you’d have one. These signs that say you can take a number of cans depending on your family size, I had to take them down end of last month (October). I just told everyone, regardless of the size of the family, you can only get one off each shelf. That’s how light these shelves were.

Q: Does this happen every year — that you run very low in the early fall, then get a ton of donations between Thanksgiving and Christmas?

A: Just about. Our client base, too, goes up around this time of year, but not usually as much as we’re seeing now. When we go to Gemma Moran to get our food in the summer months, it’s a little tight. At least that’s what I see. Now we get all the food drives — the (Jacques Cartier) French Club, the Jewett City Fire Department, the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10004), the Boy Scouts from Lisbon. The Boy Scouts from Griswold. The Girl Scouts the Griswold. The schools — the (Griswold) high school kids filled up an entire trailer for us. We’re inundated with food.

Q: How has the pantry changed since you started?

A: When we first started, they were giving, once a month, each family would get a paper grocery bag, pre-stocked, and they would take it out. But when we went to a seminar on what we have now, which is client’s choice. So we went with that, and it’s good, because now, they’re going to pick what they would like to eat. It’s what they will eat. The response — ‘Go see the food pantry now, you can pick your own food.’ We try to give them enough food where, if they stretch it out, they can make it a week of meals. It’s meant to be supplemental with the food stamps though. It’s not supposed to be the only source of food.

Page 2 of 2 -
Q: When you have extra food, especially with some of the perishable donations you get, what happens?

A: We share with St. Vincent de Paul, the soup kitchen in Norwich. They’re making meals on site, so they can use it right away. If we left it here for two weeks until the next food pickup day, it would go bad. Also, if we get donations of stuff that’s too big for any one family (holding up a triple bag of lettuce), this will go to St. Vincent de Paul, too.

Q: What’s the hardest part for you about running this place?

A: Getting the phone calls. I have the cellphone. They’ll call and say ‘I have food. Come pick it up.’ It gets expensive. Got to get here, there to pick it up. And then sometimes, when you look through the dates, you see 2008, 2009 expiration dates. We can’t give that stuff out. Same with the crushed cans — you’ve got metal touching metal. You can’t use that.